Albert Mangones was born May 26, 1917 in Port-au-Prince.  From earliest adolescence Mangones showed a natural gift for drawing.  He became known for his caricatures of friends and teachers at St. Louis de Gonzague High School.  From 1936 to 1937, he spent a year studying at the College of Agronomy, but, discovering his true calling, he enrolled in the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts.

 

The war overtook him in Europe, but in 1939 he left for the United States where he pursued architectural studies at Cornell University.  Devoting himself to drawing, painting, and sculpture, he won a prize in the latter, taking his diploma in architecture in 1940, then a “first medal” in 1943.  He returned to Haiti in 1944 after six months in Mexico.  From that time on he participated in the movements which culminated in the creation of the Centre d’Art of which he was a founding member and the Secretary General.

 

One of Mangones’ best known works is the Marron de St. Domingue, a sculpture of a runaway slave which is a Haitian national monument across from the Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince.  President and General Director of ISPAN (Institute for the Preservation of the National Heritage), he was a proponent and actively involved in the restoration of national monuments, most notably the massive Citadel Henri Christophe and the Sans Souci Palace.

 

Nadal, Marie-Jose, and Gerald Bloncourt.

La Peinture Haitienne.  Paris:  Editions Nathan, 1986